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When Chris woke up, the house was quiet.
For as long as Chris could remember, Dad had been an early riser. Even on his days off, even on weekends, he was usually up by six at the latest. Most of Chris’s weekends growing up had seen him waking up to the sound of his dad vacuuming or cleaning the kitchen or doing some other chore. Chris furrowed his brows, pushing himself up onto his elbows and looking at his phone. 6:46. Almost a half an hour after his alarm usually went off. The bus came at 7:02.
“Crap,” Chris muttered. He swung his legs out of bed and stumbled across his bedroom to his dresser. “Shit, shit, shit.” The situation probably called for a little swearing, not that Dad would know. Where were his good jeans? Hadn’t Dad washed them? He carefully got onto the floor to look under his bed, where he found them crumpled next to a pair of slippers that he only wore when it was below 50 degrees, which was almost never. “Crap.” Did he have other pants he could wear? He stood up again, and winced at a twinge in his hip.
Okay, fine, stretches first. He wasn’t going to make the bus anyway, probably. Dad could probably drive him. School didn’t start until eight. Unless he was on shift today? Maybe Chris could text him and get money for an Uber? He leaned back against the wall and carefully bent as much as he could, lengthening his spine. He breathed through it. Was Dad on shift? It would make sense why the house was so quiet. Maybe he’d been called in for an emergency? But he would have told Chris. Maybe there was a note on the table?
When he’d done all of the mobility stuff his PT had asked him to do, he ventured out into the kitchen to see if there was anything that gave him a clue there. There wasn’t. It was just quiet, and empty. There were some of his dad’s beer bottles waiting to be washed out next to the sink, just two, which wasn’t abnormal for a weekday where Dad didn’t have a morning shift. He had his weekends at weird times, like some of Chris’s friends’ parents who worked in restaurants. And—yes—after checking the calendar taped to the fridge, Chris saw that Dad did not have a shift today. His next one wasn’t until Saturday—two whole days away.
The kitchen was silent as Chris poured himself some cereal and added milk and ate it. He checked his phone for signs of life. There was a text from his grandma that he hadn’t responded to since she sent it on Monday. He hadn’t really known what to say to the are you doing okay? question. He didn’t want to lie to her, or anything, and things were mostly good, but they were still weird sometimes. He and Dad had been back for a couple of months, long enough that the fall of Chris’s sophomore year had started, and Dad was settled in at the station again. Buck had been in their hair for the first two weeks of the month they’d been here, sleeping on the couch like he had when Dad had gotten shot, but he’d found an apartment pretty fast and he and Dad had spent all of July first moving his stuff into it. They’d both seemed kind of tense about it. Chris hadn’t asked. He’d always thought it was kind of weird that Buck had moved into their house in the first place, but Buck was kind of weird in general, and it had been equally weird to see him move out of their place. He’d painted Dad’s bedroom this kind of brownish-orange color that made it feel like a cave (sort of in a good way, actually) but Dad’s bedroom furniture looked all wrong in there now. And their kitchen seemed empty without Buck’s stand mixer and his air fryer and all his other gadgets, as Dad called them.
Even if all their stuff was back where it was meant to be, and Chris was back in L.A., which was where he wanted to be, something still felt kind of—off. He didn’t know what it was. Maybe they had been gone too long, and Buck had let himself settle in, and there was a part of him still in the walls of their house. (Dad hadn’t repainted his bedroom, even though they’d had a painting day before they’d put all their furniture back in. Chris had painted his room dark blue—he had asked for black and Dad said no—and they’d painted the living room a light, sage-y green that made the fireplace look nice but went really badly with the blue couch. Dad had pushed for that one. Chris had let him have it.)
When he finished his cereal, it was 7:12. He put the bowl in the sink and went into the bathroom, glancing at his dad’s closed bedroom door as he went. He fixed his hair and brushed his teeth and washed his face and all the other stuff. 7:23. It was about a 25 minute drive to school, accounting for traffic and the dropoff line. He got dressed, putting on clean jeans that he didn’t really like and a hoodie that he did like, to balance it out a little. 7:27. He rapped his knuckles against Dad’s door.
“Dad,” he called, and when there was no response he pushed it open. “Dad, you have to drive me to—”
His dad was there, still asleep, laying with most of his face smushed in his pillow and looking dead to the world. Also there, half-sitting up and tugging the covers up to his neck, was Buck.
“—school,” Chris finished, looking at Buck. Buck looked back, his eyes wide and frantic. For a couple of seconds they both just looked at each other. Chris’s brain went what the FUCK over and over in louder and more frenzied increments. Buck still had the covers up practically to his chin and Chris did not, EW, want to think about why.
“Hi, Buck,” he said. “Um.”
“Heeey, Chris,” Buck said. His voice cracked a little on the hey, which would have been funny under any other circumstance. “I can, um, I can drive you. To school.”
My life, Chris thought with despair, is so weird. “Okay,” he said.
“Just, um,” Buck said. He still hadn’t moved. “Just go get your shoes and your bag and I’ll be out there in five seconds.”
Chris nodded. He wasn’t sure what his face looked like. “Sure,” he said. He closed the door and stood next to it for a second, hand still on the knob. From inside, he heard a noise like Buck flopping down against the bed again. Then, muffled through the wall, “Fuck.”
Well, Chris thought. At least they were on the same page. He went to get his shoes.
Buck’s hair was a mess when he got into the car. Chris did not look at him, in the interest of not seeing anything he didn’t want to see, and also because he didn’t know how to look at him at the moment. He was trying to figure out how he felt. It was surprisingly difficult.
Dad wasn’t even into guys. Was he?
He imagined asking Buck, Is my dad, like, gay for you now? He didn’t. He wasn’t sure he wanted that actual answer to that question.
Chris had to admit, though, sitting in Buck’s passenger seat with his bookbag and his crutches leaned up against his feet and his head against the window, that Dad—feeling things—for Buck— ew —made, probably, more sense than it didn’t. Dad had fun with Buck. They made each other laugh, they talked to each other when they were worried about important stuff, they were each other’s emergency contacts. Buck had been on Chris’s school pickup list since Chris had been about eight. And, probably, if they got together, it wouldn’t change much except that Chris wouldn’t ever be able to go into his dad’s bedroom again. But—in eight-ish years, neither Buck or Dad had been able to have a relationship without it crashing and burning. And the thing about Buck was that he wasn’t Ana or Marisol. He was Buck. He called Chris his sous chef when they cooked together and sent him Tweets from the LA Zoo’s Twitter account and they traded books and podcasts with each other about weird shit like doomed Arctic sea voyages and black holes and Seabiscuit the horse.
Fifteen or so minutes passed, Buck glancing at him anxiously at every red light. But he still couldn’t figure out what he wanted to say, so he said nothing, and stared out the window as hard as he could. When they got to the school, Buck took a deep breath and said, “Look, Chris—”
“The bell’s gonna ring,” Chris said, hastily, and got out of the car as fast as he could. He glanced up at Buck again for a second before closing the door and was momentarily winded by the lost, unhappy look on his face. Wait, he thought, but then the bell rang and he couldn’t think, he could only shut the door. “Um. Thanks for the ride. Bye.”
He knew from the feeling he got as he hurried away that he was doing something wrong. Despite that, he didn’t look back.
The thing was—
Once Chris had broken a bowl when he’d found out his dad had a girlfriend. He’d broken a bowl, and stormed out of the house, and he’d run to Buck. He still thought about that conversation sometimes, more than he thought about the ones they’d had since then, even if it hadn’t been the most serious conversation in the world. But he could still remember it—sitting on his couch in the loft, the soft look on Buck’s face.
Everyone leaves, he’d said, and I miss them.
You still got me, Buck had said. And I’m not going anywhere.
During fourth period, he realized he didn’t have lunch, because usually Dad made his lunch while Chris was eating his breakfast. He did, however, have a functioning DoorDash account hooked up to Dad’s credit card. So he ordered In-n-Out for himself, and a milkshake for Penny, and went to wait at the front desk for it.
Dad had texted him a couple of times over the course of the morning. Chris, bud, we have to talk, can you text me back when you see this? Then, Chris, ignoring me isn’t gonna help. I thought we both learned that lesson already. Then, a little more tense, Christopher, we really need to talk about this. We’re going to discuss it when you get home. His phone buzzed again, this time with a call, when he placed the DoorDash order.
“I’ve asked you before to ask me before you order food, Christopher,” his dad said, when he picked up. His voice was tight.
“Sorry,” Chris muttered. “I didn’t—make lunch this morning.”
“Right,” Dad said. There was a long silence. “Are you—”
“I’m not, like, mad at you or anything,” Chris said. “I didn’t—yeah. I don’t know what to—I didn’t mean—I’m sorry.”
“I’m glad you’re not mad,” Dad said, quietly. “And I’m glad you’ve got something for lunch. Just—we’re in this together. Don’t shut me out, Chris.”
“You did,” Chris said, meaning, since when the hell are you into guys. They could have talked about that in family therapy, instead of Dad’s weird mustache era.
His dad laughed a little, a kind of weird, sad laugh. “This isn’t really the kind of thing you know until it—happens, Christopher. And now that it’s happened, we can talk about it.”
There was a little hole, no smaller than the size of a pencil, in Chris’ jeans. He picked at it. He guessed that made sense. But still.
“Not right now,” he said.
“That’s fine,” Dad said. “Later. When you get home.”
“Buck, too,” Chris said. His mind flashed back to Buck’s lost look from the car. “Like. As a family. Or whatever.”
His dad exhaled, low and long. When he spoke again it sounded like he was smiling. “Okay, kid. As a family.” He paused. “Who’s the milkshake for? You hate strawberry.”
“No one,” Chris said.
“Hm,” Dad said. Definitely smiling. “Not for Penny?”
“No,” Chris said. “It’s for me. I’m trying things.”
“Seems like we both are,” Dad said, and Chris groaned. “Sorry, sorry, too soon?”
“Fine, it’s for Penny, just so you’ll stop,” Chris said, and Dad laughed again, and Chris found himself smiling too. “I—the DoorDash guy is here. I gotta go.”
“Okay, mijo,” Dad said. “Love you.”
“Love you,” Chris echoed, and meant it. When he pressed the End Call button he felt better.
The thing was—
Chris had left. He’d gone somewhere. Because it had felt easier than feeling what he was feeling, because it had been easier than looking his dad in the face, because it had been easier than sleeping in his house down the hall from the place where the woman who’d looked like his mother had been standing like she was real and not a ghost. And for the first couple weeks, Buck had texted him—little things, like his dad had—but after a couple months, they’d started to stop coming.
When Chris had been in Texas, Dad had texted him or called him every single day. Chris would wake up in the morning to a message from him, wouldn’t go to bed without receiving one. Even when he didn’t respond, they still came, day after day—Hey bud, love you, miss you. Went to the park today and saw these birds fighting. Here’s a video. The bakery in the neighborhood started doing croissants. They’re not that great at it. Love you. Miss you. And they had pissed Chris off and they had made him cry and he hadn’t responded to a single one of them for months and months and still, his dad had kept sending them, day after day after day.
Buck hadn’t. Chris could still go back in their text history and look at the six months that had passed between the last text that Buck had sent him, a couple weeks after his fourteenth birthday, and the moment when it had picked up again—when Chris had screenshotted a two-star review on Buck’s Goodreads and sent it to him with the caption ? because Buck usually only rated books three stars and above. Lol just a really unsatisfying ending, Buck had said. They killed off a main character for no reason. An hour passed. Then two. Then, How are you doing, bud?
Chris had started and erased four different messages. bad was too vulnerable. i miss LA was even worse. dad is acting weird wasn’t right, and chess is stupid and this school is stupid and my grandparents are stupid and dad is stupid and i can’t even uber to your stupid loft any more because you MOVED INTO MY HOUSE was the stupidest thing of all. So he just said fine lol and threw his phone on the bed. Went to go eat dinner with his grandparents. Came back, and there was an answer: That’s great, Chris. Glad you’re getting to spend time with your dad.
Chris had been—something. Angry, maybe. Sad, maybe. Something he wanted to run from, either way. But the problem with going to Texas was sometimes your dad followed you. Sometimes he bought a freaking house. Sometimes there was nowhere else to run to. And you had to just suck it up, and play chess, and drown in the humidity, and watch your dad give up the job that he loved more than anything else in the world. And—and—and you got a that’s great, Chris, on the phone, from the guy who once told you he was never going anywhere.
When he got home from school Buck was still there, a ball of anxiety in the kitchen, on the other side of the house from Dad, who was looking at him out of the corner of his eye and probably thought he was being subtle. Buck was spreading dough out in a sheet pan for homemade pizza like someone was holding him at gunpoint to do it, and Dad’s jaw was tight.
Did they fight? Chris wondered. He could feel himself getting a little mad. Why the hell would Dad—or Buck—start something if they were just going to fight? What would the point of that be? It was like speedrunning a breakup. At least before when they’d dated people and broken up horribly they’d dated for like six months or whatever first.
His dad looked at him. Chris looked back. The side of Dad’s mouth quirked up, in a kind of, funny seeing you here sort of expression. And in a way it was true, Chris thought. He had half thought he’d never see Dad date anyone else ever again, and now he’d jumped straight for what was the riskiest possible option.
“So you’re dating guys now?” Chris decided on, as a starter. He plopped down on the armchair they’d brought back from the house in Texas and dropped his backpack on the floor next to it.
“Oh-kay, wow, straight into it, huh,” Dad said. Chris raised an eyebrow at him, like, obviously, Dad, I saw you and Buck in bed together this morning, I’m not an idiot. Which he wasn’t. Dad raised an eyebrow back, kind of playfully, and it could have pissed Chris off, but it made him smile, instead. And he was glad, once it happened, to not be pissed off. The last time they’d been in a situation like this, with Dad not telling him something big, Chris had been so angry it had been like a living thing inside him, frightening and cold. Although maybe that wasn’t true. There had been the whole Uber thing, too. He hadn’t been mad, then, but he also hadn’t exactly been happy. It had just been weird to see Dad like that—not sure of himself, with a dinky car doing a job he didn’t like. For Chris, so they could be together. And Chris had been happy about that part, but unhappy that Dad hadn’t seemed like himself. Or at least not the version of him that Chris remembered, and had thought he understood.
Which. Speaking of versions of his dad he understood. “So?”
A raised eyebrow. “Yes, Chris, I’m dating guys now.”
Chris picked at the hole in his jeans again. “Okay. Cool. So you like guys too.”
Dad blew some air out of his mouth in a big whoosh. “Not too, ” he said.
Chris blinked. Then blinked again. “Wait, you just like guys?”
“It’s a recent realization,” Dad said.
“How? ” Chris said.
“You’re asking me, kid,” Dad said.
“But you and Mom,” Chris said.
“Were best friends,” Dad said. “And I’m so happy that I had the relationship I had with her, because we had you. But I—” He cleared his throat. “It’s new. I’m figuring it out. But I’m pretty sure the reason I could never make it work with her, or Ana or Marisol, is—” He waved a hand in the air.
“You’re gay,” Chris said, more to himself than to Dad, feeling kind of stunned. “Huh.” It—well. Chris wasn’t a genius about dating or anything. He was pretty new to it himself. So it wasn’t like he’d ever noticed anything was weird between Dad and his girlfriends, or anything as easy in retrospect as that. But he did, at the same time, kind of feel like it made sense. Like, how he always felt like they spent more time all together—doing things As A Family—than Dad ever did one-on-one with his girlfriends. He always figured that his dad, weirdo that he was, had just overcorrected a ton after that time Chris freaked out about Ana and just wanted to be super sure that Chris would like them. But when it came to a lot of his friends—like Liam, whose parents were divorced—they didn’t hang out with the people their moms or dads were dating too often until the relationships got more serious. Chris had always met his dad’s girlfriends early, and had spent a lot of time with them.
Dad and Buck weren’t like that. Sure, all three of them spent time together, but Dad also spent tons of time one-on-one with Buck, outside of work, even when they spent so much time together at work. They’d go out to bars together, or grocery shopping, or Dad would tag along with Buck to the farmer’s market, or hiking, or whatever. They loved hanging out. Dad made excuses to make it happen, even. It wasn’t like he couldn’t grocery shop by himself, but he always claimed Buck could somehow find the better cuts of meat at the butcher counter, whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.
“Is that,” Dad said, “okay, or—”
“What? Oh, yeah, it’s fine, Dad, jeez,” Chris said. He realized they had been sitting in silence for a while as he processed. “It’s 2025. You can be gay.”
“Wow, thanks, Chris,” Dad said, amused.
Chris rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. It’s not a big deal. I’m glad you figured it out, or whatever.” He glanced again at the tight line of Buck’s back in the kitchen and lowered his voice. “Just, um, did it have to be Buck?”
Dad looked nonplussed. “You love Buck,” he said.
“Yeah, obviously,” Chris said, even lower. “So, I mean, what if—”
“Chris,” Dad said, also in a low voice. “This is—I know it’s a lot, and it’s a big change, and we’re all gonna have to talk it out. But I—he makes me really, really happy. I’m not—you don’t have to worry about us breaking up any time soon. Possibly never.”
Chris looked at him. He did look happier, even with the tightness in his jaw. From him and Buck fighting, despite Dad saying they were happy. There was still a little ball of anxiety in his chest. He tried to unspool it. “Is Buck worried about it?”
“He thought we would have more time to warm you up to it,” Dad said, more cautiously. “But he’s not worried about you , bud. He loves you.”
“But you guys could break up, and then—I don’t know. It’d be weird.”
“Lots of things are,” Dad said. “And change always is. But we can’t just—keep ourselves stagnant. We have to try stuff, you know? Go for it, sometimes. If it makes us happy.”
Chris looked at him for a little bit. It struck him that normally when his father gave him life advice, he’d present it as a you question; you should go for this, if you think it would make you happy. Now Dad was saying we. Including himself in it. With anyone else it wouldn’t have meant much, probably. But it was his dad. So it did.
Chris stood up, pushing himself steady and heading over to Buck, who was spreading pizza sauce on top of the dough. Still tense. Chris, before Buck could say anything, took his sous chef apron off the hook on the wall. He got a spoon out of the cabinet and held his hand out for the jar.
Buck, silent and so nervous Chris could feel it coming off him in waves, gave it to him. Chris put some sauce on the dough, too, and spread it out with the back of the spoon.
Chris had been doing this thing with his therapist, since coming back to L.A., when he couldn’t put words to what he wanted: where they worked backwards from a bad feeling. What’s the worst thing you can imagine happening? Okay, work backwards from that to find the opposite—the thing you want to happen. Chris did not want Buck to dump Dad, which meant he wanted them to stay together. Which meant he—was cool with them being together in the first place. So that wasn’t the problem, really. That wasn’t why it freaked him out so much that it was Buck. It was that—okay, what else didn’t he want? For Buck to just suddenly—vanish, like dating Dad was the important part, like he’d only been all buddy-buddy with Chris to get, like, an in. Suddenly he knew what question he needed to ask, how to put words around the thing that had been bothering him all day, since he’d seen them in bed together. It was something he wouldn’t have worried about, once, but then he’d gone to Texas and he and Buck had barely talked the whole time, and now there was so much in the air between them, compressed into too little space. Like a black hole.
“Buck,” he said. “Are you, uh.” He could feel his face getting really red and pushed past it. “Are we still going to the movies next weekend? To see Thunderbolts?”
Buck sighed in a way that sounded like he was letting a lot of tension out, but also sort of like an old dog laying down. Chris glanced over at him and paused at his expression, the way he had earlier, getting out of the car. This time, though, Buck just looked familiar, and kind. Relieved.
“Chris, bud,” he said. “Remember once how I told you you’ve always got me?”
“But I didn’t,” Chris said, quietly. “You didn’t—we stopped talking. When I was in Texas.”
“I know,” Buck said. “I missed you, but I didn’t want to push. It didn’t seem like you wanted to answer.”
“I didn’t,” Chris said. “But I missed you too.” He looked at the red sauce all over the pizza. Their matching aprons. Thought about Buck’s paint still on the walls of Dad’s bedroom and how empty the kitchen seemed without his stand mixer on the counter and the familiar rattle of his Jeep’s engine when he’d driven Chris to school.
“Oh, Chris,” Buck said. “Buddy, I’m sorry.”
“I just,” Chris said, then paused and restarted and said, “look, it’s whatever. I mean. It’s good. If you and Dad. Are doing.” He looked away again, at his feet. “Whatever you’re doing. But I still want you to take me to the movies.” And I want us to keep swapping books and watching shows together that Dad hates and cooking as a team. I want you to keep taking me to the zoo even though I’m too old for it. I want you to keep baking cakes for my birthday that kind of look like shit. I want you to stay.
When he’d been a little kid, he’d said Buck was his best friend. That wasn’t exactly true any more. Buck was just—Buck.
“I didn’t want you to find out like this,” Buck said. When Chris glanced back at him, he was red, too. “Obviously. And I’m sure your dad wanted to—talk to you about it, one on one. Before you, uh. Saw us together. So. I’m sorry. But.” He cleared his throat. “Even if we didn’t do this start bit right, I don’t want it to—mess the whole thing up.” He leaned his hip against the counter and put his hand on Chris’s shoulder. “You’re an important part of this too, Chris. You always have been. It’s not just about me wanting to be with your dad. It’s about me wanting to be here. With both of you.”
“So,” Chris said. “What does that mean?”
“Do you remember what I said that one time?” Buck said. “How sometimes people leave for a bit, and we miss them—”
“And then they come back,” Chris said, with only a little bit of an eye roll. “I’m not a kid any more, Buck. I know how the world works.”
“I know,” Buck said. “Just—maybe it wasn’t fair for me to say I was never going anywhere. But I can say I’m—all in. On both of you. Have been for a while. I promise.”
Chris thought about that, and then held out his hand. They shook on it.
“Don’t break my dad’s heart,” Chris said, because it seemed like the right thing to say, and anyway Buck was probably the only person Dad had ever dated that would actually be capable of doing it.
“No, yeah, for sure, that’s, uh, precious cargo,” Buck said. From behind them, in the doorway, Dad snorted.
“Seriously?” he said.
“What! It’s true.”
“Ew, and don’t do whatever this is,” Chris said.
His dad laughed at him, too, crossing behind them to sit down at the kitchen table, ruffling Chris’s hair on the way. “You heard him, Buckley, no flirting with me.”
“How, uh, how much of that did you—”
“I got here somewhere around all in,” Dad said, his eyes bright.
“Well,” Buck said. He shot a quick glance at Chris. “I am.”
“Good,” Dad said. “I am, too.”
“And I’m hungry, so can we just get dinner started?”
“How are you so hungry, Mr. I had In-n-Out for lunch?” Dad said.
“Well, Penny ate most of my fries,” Chris said, without thinking, then, “wait, I mean, uh, Omar took them. And Liam. Not Penny.”
“Uh huh,” Dad said. “Buck, get a load of what Omar did, right?”
“Yeah, what a jerk,” Buck said, grin creeping over his face. “Can’t believe he had it in him.”
“You guys suck,” Chris complained. “Buck, where’s the cheese?”
“Gotta shred it first,” Buck said, and tossed a block of cheese to Dad. “Get to work, Eddie.”
“You have a perfectly good sous chef right there,” Dad said.
“Who’s going to help me with the stuff that requires some skill,” Buck said.
Dad, still sitting down, groaned. “I’m not a bad cook, Buck.”
“Chris,” Buck said, “difference between chop, dice and mince, go.”
“Chop is big chunks, dice is like medium sized, and mince is really little,” Chris said.
“See?” Buck said, and pointed at Dad. “Just grate the cheese, Eddie.”
Dad rolled his eyes and stood up to do what he said. He bumped his shoulder against Buck’s as he walked past him, and Chris watched as both of them lit up, a little, grinning at each other in a stupid, corny way, and groaned. But at the same time—it felt good. It felt right. And he could tell they were happy. He watched Buck, who was digging pizza toppings out of the fridge, and a memory came to him, from a while ago now—Buck coming over on a random Tuesday, back when he was still with Tommy and Dad was with Marisol, before everything blew up, and handing Chris a plastic bag full of hair products that turned out to be for curly hair. And Chris hadn’t had the words then, either, but he’d liked that they were—the same, somehow. That something about them was the same.
Buck spun on his heel and grabbed a colander from the cabinet, handing it to Chris and breaking his train of thought. “You’re on mushroom duty,” he said.
Chris stood at attention as best he could and barked “Yes, chef!” like they did on The Bear. Buck threw his head back when he laughed, and Dad watched him do it with a smile on his face and big moony eyes. Probably, when they all went to bed that night, Buck would be in the bedroom with Dad, and no one would be sleeping on their couch any more, and they were—trying something new, but they were trying it together. A new configuration of the three of them, to see if it fit. And it did fit. Already, it did.